Less than a year after back surgery and in the middle of a mentally taxing season,
Andy Murray
did something almost unheard of in tennis and professional sports in general: He hired a woman to help him.

Amélie Mauresmo,
a former No. 1 player, has stepped in for
Ivan Lendl,
who had led Murray to two Grand Slam singles titles and an Olympic gold medal. Lendl had tired of traveling around the globe. Murray, who has fallen to No. 9 in the world rankings, is seeded eighth at the U.S. Open, which starts Monday. Two years ago, he won the title.

Signing up Mauresmo shouldn't be seen as bold or newsworthy, especially in tennis, the most successful women's pro sport in the world. Yet despite all the female talent in tennis, women coaches are few. On the men's tour, only two other top-50 players work with women—one with his wife and one with his mother. Coaches on the women's tour, too, are rare. But Murray moved quickly to hire Mauresmo, and they plan to work together long-term.

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"Once I started to grow up and think for myself and know what I want, it was a lot easier for me to think, 'Actually, there's absolutely no reason why I couldn't work with a female coach,'" said Murray, who learned the game as a child in Scotland from his mother, Judy. "Maybe it doesn't cross many players' minds. Maybe it will now."

Another woman broke barriers in coaching this summer. The San Antonio Spurs, fresh off an NBA championship, hired WNBA player
Becky Hammon
as the first female full-time assistant coach in the league.

Hammon's role will be essential, but tennis may be the sport where the coach-player bond is the most important, intimate—and fraught. They travel together, hit balls to each other endlessly, always tweaking, psyching up. When winning players triumphantly climb into the stands to hug their families, there is the coach—who also is family. They fight, they make up, they push, they back off. When they connect, the results can be historic. Last year, Murray became the first British man to win Wimbledon since
Fred Perry
in 1936.

Tennis has had famous women coaches before—
Gloria Connors
(mother of Jimmy), Billie Jean King (Tim Mayotte) and
Melanie Molitor
(mother of
Martina Hingis
)—but no modern male player of Murray's caliber has hired a woman while in his prime.

ENLARGE

Murray and Mauresmo practice together.
Rex Features/Associated Press

Mauresmo, 35, who won two Grand Slam singles titles in her career, and Murray, 27, have much in common. They are masters of variety and finesse, wise in the many ways of carving up a tennis court. They are both hyper-competitive and among the sport's best athletes: Few players have Murray's speed and quickness; Mauresmo has taken up marathon running since retiring. They come from European nations with demanding, tennis-mad fans. Both players lost many marquee matches before they started to win them.

So far, they have bonded over banter. "We like to talk," Mauresmo said Tuesday afternoon, after a two-hour practice with Murray inside Louis Armstrong Stadium at the U.S. Open. "We like to get into the psychological part of the sport. Of yourself, of the moment, everything. The little details in the head, in the game, the little moments in the match, how to approach a final of a Grand Slam." Also, she said, "there's a lot of teasing."

Murray says he's impressed with Mauresmo's firmness. "When she needs to be, she's very strong," he said. "She gives her opinion. She's demanding when she's on the court with me."

Murray's results have been uneven since his back surgery last September. He hasn't won a tournament since Wimbledon last year. He played in pain at the Australian Open, where he lost in the quarterfinals to
Roger Federer
.
Then in March, Lendl, who hated planes and hotels even in the days when he dominated tennis, told Murray he couldn't commit to the number of weeks Murray wanted him to be available.

"I didn't know Andy at all, almost, before he texted me," Mauresmo said. They met before the French Open and agreed to a trial during the grass-court season, including Wimbledon. They are now tidying up a deal that will put Mauresmo on the road 23 to 27 weeks a year.

Chief among Murray's wishes for a coach was someone who knew how to listen. "It becomes easier to open up to people when you feel like you're being listened to," he said.

At times this season, Murray has been "dominant"—Mauresmo's word—until he inexplicably loses. "I've messed up a lot of matches when I've been in winning positions," Murray said. "And I need to change that."

"You need to find the thing that is going to click the other way," Mauresmo said. "Sometimes it's not much. Sometimes it's a couple of conversations, sometimes it's one match that he turns around. You never know really, but we're trying to find it."

Murray stripped down his game with Lendl, relying more on his forehand and his serve. He believes panache—the slices, net rushes, lobs and finesse shots he used more as a young player—should become a bigger part of his arsenal in the future. Mauresmo, who transitioned from a defensive style to winning Wimbledon with a serve-and-volley attack, went through a similar transformation. "How to approach this, it is very tricky," she said.

Andrei Chesnokov,
who retired in 1999, was a rare male pro with a female coach who was not a relative. He worked with
Tatiana Naumko
from the age of eight, all the way up to No. 9 in the world. He ignored those who didn't take the relationship seriously.

"Maybe someone laughed at me behind my back, or I heard rumors about myself and my coach, but when I played tennis, I was a little bit blind," Chesnokov said. "She was like a mother for me."

Biljana Veselinovic,
who has coached female pros for more than a decade, said the sport's long season and heavy travel made it all but impossible for a woman who wanted to have a family. She recently took four months off, unpaid, to spend time with her teenage son in Novi Sad, Serbia.

"He is at a rough age," she said. "When a husband is working and traveling, especially in Serbia, he is considered as a provider to a family. More or less it's considered you're a bad mom if you're not present enough."

At the Open, Veselinovic is working with top-25 pro
Alizé Cornet.
They struck up a conversation in the lunch line at a Wimbledon warm-up tournament.

"Understanding a woman as a creature is probably easier for me than for a man," Veselinovic said. "By nature women are maybe more patient, more like mothers, talking. The tough time is when you have to push. I think guys are better pushers. But it's not important that you are female or male, it's the message you are delivering to the player."

Mauresmo endured hard preparation for her current role as a trailblazer. When she came out as a lesbian in 1999, at the age of 19, the reaction stung her.

"The comments about sexuality were quite brutal," she said. "The very few comments that I have had now are nothing."

Mauresmo said she never planned to become a coach and she still sees herself more as a former player, one who has been where Murray has been and can help him get back there. She coached
Marion Bartoli
when Bartoli won her only Grand Slam title at Wimbledon in 2013.

After this year's Wimbledon, Murray and Mauresmo had their first long stretch together: two weeks in Miami, where Murray has an apartment and often trains. She put Murray through his paces: early wake-up calls, tennis, workouts with his physical trainer in the gym, more tennis.

"We worked hard, but it was more sort of planned," Murray said. "I was able to train smarter and train harder than I had for the rest of the year."

Mauresmo doubts that her work with Murray will lead to an influx of women coaches in tennis. "I would think that a player, his first thought would be, 'Ah, she can't really help me because she hasn't played the game, or she's not as good a player as I am,'" Mauresmo said.

Murray dismisses that attitude. "There's a lot of coaches out there, male coaches, that Amélie could comfortably beat at tennis," he said. "I'm sure if Amélie played tennis against
Toni Nadal
[
Rafael Nadal
's
uncle and coach] it would be a pretty comfortable win for Amélie."

To have more women coaches at the top, Mauresmo said, there first must be more at lower levels. Men far outnumber women among everyday teaching professionals, despite the unparalleled success of women's tennis as an international sport. The U.S. Professional Tennis Association, which certifies tennis instructors, counts just 17.5% of its professional members as women. The U.S. Tennis Association's high-performance program, which trains top juniors, has 24 coaches—two are women. The International Tennis Federation said that among its member nations, about 20 to 25% of those who enroll in entry-level coaching programs are women.

Mauresmo said she didn't accept this job to further a cause or become a role model. "I understand that completely, I am happy—but I think it is more Andy who is showing the way," she said. "My concern is that he wins more Grand Slams. I need to deliver."

One day in Miami this summer, Murray, Mauresmo, his physical trainer and some fellow players, all of them men, drove to a soccer field near Murray's apartment. They played five-on-five at 1 p.m. in 105-degree heat. Mauresmo more than held her own. "She can run all day," Murray said. "We won, so that's the most important thing."

The issue is Murray's (controlling) mother. She is the dominant force and won't allow a strong (male) coach. A female, who also happens to be a lesbian is no threat to her. Hence the hook-up. Since she has been his coach, he has had terrible results. He is at least a top three player, but currently ranked like 9th.

the slices, net rushes, lobs and finesse shots that Murray thinks will elevate him to elite status among Federer, Nadal, Novak, etc will not work in today's game of power and mental toughness. He should have worked with Lendle no matter what the limitations of his travel were. Lendle made the difference and this new coach won't measure up.

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